OUR DEFINITION
Social business is a concept developed by Muhammad Yunus to define profit-making businesses that declares a social goal as its bottom line. An important aspect of this model is that all of the profit made by the business goes back into the business, not to an owner, or owners. Here is a description of social business in Yunus’s own words:
Creating a World Without Poverty (Yunus, 2007), page 24
“A social business might be defined as a non-loss, non-dividend business. Rather than being passed on to investors, the surplus generated by the social business is reinvested in the business. Ultimately, it is passed on to the target group of beneficiaries in such forms as lower prices, better services, and greater accessibility.”
Note: Although many businesses exemplify some of the principles of social business in their governance or in their corporate responsibility statements, there are few true social businesses because the model is relatively new.
LINKS TO OTHER DEFINITIONS
FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT SOCIAL BUSINESS
Harvard Business School - articles
EXISTING SOCIAL BUSINESSES
Note: these businesses exemplify some of the non-MFI social businesses, although many of them work closely with microfinance.
